


Keep Yourself Warm

by lindenwaverly



Category: Green Lantern - Fandom
Genre: Angst, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 22:56:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2246448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindenwaverly/pseuds/lindenwaverly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People always accuse Guy of being childish, so he here is using child logic – if he can’t see Hal position the girl under him the same way she’s positioning her pool cue to take a shot, it doesn’t exist.</p><p>Or - Hal comes into Warrior's every night, and Guy tries to sort out how he's feeling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Yourself Warm

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely inspired by the Frightened Rabbits song "Keep Yourself Warm", which I suggest you listen to while reading this fic. Or even just generally. It's a really good song. And it was inspired by a prompt by the lovely illbebackinaflash.tumblr.com, who runs a great blog. Also I feel I should add that I'm not very used to writing smut, so I'm sorry for the quality :/

Back when Guy was a teacher, he’d worked in a lot of rough places. Sometimes the kids would have to be moved away from the windows or taken early out of break to stop them seeing something going on outside the gates. Seven’s too young to see chalk lines on the pavement, let alone what they’re drawn around. So he’d invented a game for the kids called “Eyes Straight Ahead”. The rules of the game were pretty simple – everyone in the class would stare straight ahead at him as hard as they could, and he only thing that made it a game was the prize of a lollipop from his desk draw. He can still picture their faces – eyes squinted up from the enthusiasm with which  they stared, trusting in the idea that an adult could make the world safe and ok.

This is the game he thinks of as he stares at his blurry reflection in the bar top. It’s the same game he’s played with himself every night for a week. People always accuse him of being childish, so he here is using child logic – if he can’t see Hal position the girl under him the same way she’s positioning her pool cue to take a shot, it doesn’t exist.

But he can see them, that’s the thing, because there’s something addictive about watching Hal in his natural habitat – his soft, slow grin, just the right side of lecherous; his hips when he’s slow dancing in front of the ratty old jukebox; the deep, animal kisses he plants on the neck of whatever girl he’s here with that make them arch and bit their lip – and then he remembers that he’s not supposed to be doing this to himself, and goes back to wiping the bar.

He knows the girl Hal’s dancing with tonight – he thinks he might have fucked her in high school, though the years and brain damage means he’s not entirely sure. She’s a sweet girl, and a fun girl, which might explain how they got from pool to talking to slow dancing together so quickly. Hal catches him looking and shoots him a wink. He doesn’t respond, and if Hal’s surprised by his unusual tact then that’s just his fucking problem, isn’t it?

This has been going on for a week now. Every night Guy’s been going home and waking up five times, the covers a twisted mess. He’d call Tora, but she’s in a different time zone and as far as he’s aware she’s kind of happy at the moment. He’d call Kyle, but the kid’s with Carol, probably having a functional relationship. John and him – they’re having another one of their fights, the kind that seem to happen like clockwork at the moment.

“Some barkeep. I’ve been waiting here for a good five minutes.”

Hal’s leaning on the bar, glossy and self-satisfied with an irritating half-sneer underneath his grin.

“See Jordan, the trick is that if you want a drink you have to ask for one.”

“Aren’t you meant to ask me about my troubles?”

“Too busy trying to get one of my own troubles to order his drink and fuck off.”

“Well then. I’ll take a Bells, no ice.”

“Just the one?”

He shrugs. “She’s in the ladies, just getting ready to leave.”

“And I suppose you’ll be leaving with her.”

“You’re damn right.”

“Thank god. Feel like hurrying that up?”

Hal looks at him sideways, but he doesn’t say anything. He slams his drink and throws a handful of dollars on the table, which Guy knows without looking which even begin to cover the cost of his tab. Then he walks out into the crisp cold night.

* * *

 

When Guy gets home, he hangs his coat up on the single peg on the back of his door. He makes himself a cup of coffee and sits down to read the sports pages, but the sentences just don’t fit together in his head and he ends up staring out into the bay, watching the oil tankers slowly cross the line between the blackness of the sea and the hollow blackness of the sky. He takes off his clothes, walks to the bathroom, brushes his teeth.  And he’s going to go to bed, he really is. He’s going to stop staring at himself in the mirror in just a minute. He’s going to let go of the sink soon. Very soon.

The bathroom is roughly the size of a cupboard. When he stands in front of the sink his back is pressed painfully against the wall, and he has to stoop slightly to get his whole face in the mirror. The lighting is one bar bulb which casts strange shadows across his face. He could turn on the strip lighting above the mirror, but he’s not sure he really wants to see his face that clearly. Not right now.

And it’s here, in this shitty little room, that he decides he is just so fucking done with lying to himself.

He’s always admired Carol – the way she accepted her lot and gave herself over to the vicious savagery of love without being broken by it. But she moved on, didn’t she? She’d recognised a losing bet and shifted her feelings on Kyle – sure the kid had issues upon issues, but at least he wasn’t Hal. But he had to be too fucking stubborn. He had to – and there he cuts off that train of thought, because there’s still a limit to how honest he’ll be with himself.

He forces himself to turn off the lights, to get into bed and close his eyes.

* * *

 

They all had pretty awful childhoods, as far as Guy can make out. He knows the full details of Kyle’s, of course. John told him the bare bones of his after a night of drinking, his voice clipped and wry.

“And they always told me that my grandpa was stabbed in the heart by a woman who loved him too much.”

“That makes no fucking sense.”

“Mmm. That’s what I thought. And then I met the Predator.”

But Hal’s has only ever been suggested in the occasional off-the-cuff comment and darkened look. So Guy’s surprised when he flops into the barstool in front of him and asks:

“Have I ever told you about my mother?”

“Uh… no? I mean I know you two… stopped talking”

“She refused to see me on her deathbed because I joined the airforce.”

“Yeah. Wow.”

He drinks, swaying back a little on the stool. He’s a lot drunker than Guy thought he was – his arm movements are unsteady and repetitive.

“She was a special kind of emotionally manipulative. Plus she’s wear I get my stubbornness from.”

“Why are you telling me this, Hal?”

“Jesus Christ, can’t a guy try and fucking bond with his fellow lantern?” Guy reaches towards him, but he pushes the hand away and wipes his mouth. “Whatever. Just… whatever. I see you looking over at me every night, judging me like you haven’t dicked over hundreds of girls the same way.”

“Hal.” His voice is hoarse. “Hal, I’m not judging you.”

He looks at him like he’s seeing him for the first time. “Fuck. Yeah, I know. Fuck. I’m sorry.”

“Go home, Hal.”

“Oh hell no. Not on my own.”

“You’ve been fucking people you don’t know for a damn week and a half. Has it made you feel better yet?”

Hal looks at him levelly. “Maybe I’m not out to feel better.”

“What are you out for?”

“I’m… fuck, I don’t know. But whatever gets you through the night, right?”

Then he pushes himself up. Guy loses sight of him in the crowds of the bar.

* * *

 

He’s just stepped out for some fresh air after closing time when he sees it.

There’s someone getting head in the alley. The figure on his knees is unmistakably male – he doesn’t know who, he can just see broad shoulders and sleeve tattoos – but the other guy, oh he’d know that leather jacket anywhere.

Hal’s got his head tipped back, hands gripping the guy’s hair so hard it has to hurt, every so often a soft moan of “fuck” escaping his lips. One hand moves lovingly across the guy’s neck, fingers lazy. Guy should look away. He is going to walk back into the bar and pour himself a whiskey.

Hal’s rutting his hips now, throat exposed in the streetlight. “Fuck, I’m close,” he gasps, and that’s when Guy turns around and walks back into the bar. If he sees Hal come he won’t be able to contain his own shout.

He comes over the bathroom sink, lips bloody from biting down to stop him saying anyone’s name.

* * *

 

“Jack and coke, barkeep.”

Hal’s mellow tonight. There’s something more relaxed about him, the practised slickness of his usual demeanour gone. He’s the kind of scruffy that on Guy would look trashy but on him just looks insouciant and cool.

“Coming right up. Shouldn’t you be out there stalking your prey?”

“Having a quiet night tonight, I think.”

Guy grunts and turns away, but when he looks up five minutes later Hal is still there, giving him a half wave. He keeps looking up as the night goes on and the bar gets first louder, then quieter, but each time Hal’s still there, occasionally holding up a finger for another drink.

It’s two hours before closing time when Hal starts to actually talk to him. The night’s died down, and there’s a low buzz of drunk old men laughing in the corner. From the girl’s bathroom he can hear crying, but he doesn’t plan on checking it out.

“Sorry for dumping on you’re the other day. About my mother, I mean.”

Guy cocks his head at him, one hand rubbing the glass. “I just didn’t want you to tell me something you wouldn’t have told me sober.”

“Eh. I know your dark and terrible past. Mine’s yours to browse through.”

“I’m already dealing with your dark and terrible present.”

He laughs at that – his real laugh, just a soft huff of breath. Hal doesn’t laugh like normal people. He gets a look in his eye like laughing makes him think of something else, and whatever else he’s thinking of is horribly, horribly sad.

But he’s probably just thinking about hamburgers.

They talk and talk after that – not about each other’s childhoods, because fuck that noise, but about random shit. Flying. Teaching. Guy’s showing him sign language, and the nickname the deaf kids called him, when he finally notices the time.

“Fuck.”

“You ok?”

“Yeah, it’s just… you gotta go home, Jordan. It’s late. I need to be closing up.”

“Do I have to go home?” Hal says, pouty faced. The rest of the bars already cleared out.

“Well Jesus, you can sleep in a booth if you really want but you help yourself to any drink and I’ll gut you. Not that you’re ever going to pay for the stuff I – “

“I thought,” says Hal – slowly, deliberately, eyes dangerous – “I could help you lock up.”

Guy, of course, tells him no. He tells him to go home, and then he locks up and goes to bed with his heart still whole and the knowledge that he made the right decision. He calls Tora the next morning and schedules a lunch date, and maybe he goes for a drink with Kyle and casually slips it into conversation – “Oh, you know I think Hal propositioned me last night”.

He absolutely does not stand stock still, face naked and exposing all his emotions before he has time to get his expression under control. He does not let Hal stand up and lean across the bar, drag him in for a kiss that tastes of too little booze for them to write it off as a mistake for next morning. He doesn’t pull him across the bar, wedge him against it and grind into him like some pathetic slut. He doesn’t do that, because this is not really happening.

Hal’s laughing into his mouth now, and for a second Guy thinks that the son of a bitch was just fucking with him, that this will be one more thing he’ll hold over his head – “Hey, did you know Guy wants to fuck me? Yeah, all that posturing about how much he hates me and in reality he’s just like everyone else – dying to get on this.” But then Hal bites his neck and makes a sound that starts broken and ends feral, and Guy can’t resist saying his name, telling him that that’s good, that’s what he wants, just like that oh please.

Hal kisses him again, and then he undoes his fly  and Guy – Guy drops to his knees like he’s fucking hungry, and fuck it if tomorrow he’ll be humiliated by how desperate he is to kiss Hal’s cock, to wrap his lips around it and watch as Hal’s face goes from smug to desperate in about four seconds.

“Fuck, Guy, where did you learn this?”

_I’m full of surprises_ he wants to say, but his mouth is a little busy at the moment so instead he concentrates on curling his tongue just right, on shifting the angle of his mouth so that Hal clenches the edge of the bar with one hand, the other hand in Guy’s hair, fingers skittering across his scalp. “I’m gonna – “ he moans, but Guy is a vindictive little son of a bitch and he pulls back, lessons the pressure until Hal makes a desperate, pleading sound and looks down at him, aggression sharpening the arousal on his face.

“I’m not going to fucking beg, Gardner.”

So he shrugs and sucks viciously and Hal cries out and comes in his mouth, one hand on the back of his neck to keep him in place. He pushes against it, rebelling, but Hal just holds him in place tighter.

“Now swallow.”

He does. “Fuck you, Jordan.”

“I’m a bit exhausted for that, but I think I can manage to blow you.” Then he drops down to Guy’s level and pushes him onto his back, kneeling between his legs and looking up at him with that fucking smirk on his face, like five minutes ago he wasn’t thrusting into his mouth. “Now play nice.”

“Go fuck yourself,” he snarls, but Hal just laughs and lowers his mouth, and wow does that get rid of any aggression left fast. He arches up and moans, but there’s a hand on his hip pressing him down and he complies even though a part of him rebels because if Hal stops now he’ll lose his fucking mind.

He moves his hands down to grip Hal’s hair but he grabs his wrists and holds them down with a sound that’s almost fucking feral. The sound travels through his dick and he bites his lip to try and control himself. It’s too fucking late – he’s coming, his orgasm rattling through up his spine and out of his throat in a sound that he didn’t even know he could fucking make.

Hal is spitting and swearing. “Jesus Christ, a little warning next time.”

“ ‘m sorry,” he murmurs.

“You came in my fucking eye. Jesus, Gardner, you son of a bitch.”

Feeling is coming back – not just in feeling, but  _feelings,_ and he really doesn’t want that. He reaches up and grabs an open bottle of vodka, swallowing it as he tucks himself in. Hal raises an eyebrow, and he lifts the bottle back at him in a bitter kind of toast.

“Just a nightcap, Jordan. Keep your judgement in your pants.”

He shrugs and holds out his hand. “Gimme a swig.”

Guy watches him drink. “So what happens now?”

Hal wipes his mouth and grimaces. He hasn’t looked at him yet. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know, I write my number on a napkin and you promise to call me and never do?”

That gets him a look. “You know, I figured I’d have at least a five minute afterglow period where you weren’t being a dick.”

“Join the club.”

“Why, what the fuck have I done?”

He looks down at his legs, still splayed stupidly out on the floor. “Nothing. You’ve done nothing.”

Hal’s staring at him now. He reaches over as if to touch his face, but Guy bats his hand away.

“Guy – “

“Go on. Go. We’re all guys here, right? I know you don’t do morning afters.”

Hal reaches forwards again and grabs the front of his shirt, pulling him up so they’re level. “Gardner, what the fuck is going on with you.”

“The hell you talking about?”

“One minute you’re sucking my cock and the next you’re acting like a jilted ex-girlfriend.”

“Really? Really? The man who’s spent the whole week cruising my bar looking for meaningless hook-ups to forget the fact that his girlfriend has run off with someone younger, cuter and way less of a fuck-up – “

The punch is expected, and he almost laughs because they’re back on familiar ground. He rolls with it and strikes back, catching Hal in the stomach, and then they’re rolling on the floor again, a stupid fucking parody of what was happening before. He’s laughing so hard he doesn’t realise he’s crying until Jordan gets him in a headlock and holds him there.

“Gardner, get a fucking grip.” He releases him, and Guy stumbled back, laughs chocking in his throat.

“I thought I told you to get out.”

“I thought you were fucking sane and look what happened.”

“You knew, didn’t you?” Hal cocks his head to this side and looks at him, and he grins like a gorilla. “You kissed me right there because you knew I was going to say yes. You’ve known all along, you cocksucker, haven’t you? Known right before I did?”

Hal looks down at the ground and doesn’t say anything, but that’s all he needs. He shuts his eyes and leans back against the counter.

“Get the fuck out of my bar.”

He doesn’t open them again until he hears the slam of the door.


End file.
